A little bit of surgery....

What I do like about BJDs is that when you get fed up with their look you can change them.  I'd been thinking that I was rather bored with one of my little dolls and maybe she should look for a new home.  The thing is though, she's been here a long time, since 2008,  and I felt a little bit mean sending her away.  So this morning I decided to give her a bit of 'surgery'!  She is an Elf Elly Eomji by Dollmore and is one of the tiniest dolls that I have, at 14cm, but she has a beautifully sculpted body and the nicest hands and feet I've ever see on a doll.  They really are very elegant and well done.  So I took her to pieces and removed her old elastic.....it was really loose and floppy which made posing her a bit of a nightmare.  Now I was going to document this process with photos and make a tutorial of it, but to be honest, once I'd started, I really needed both hands AND those of my hubby, to get her back together again.  The replacement elastic was so thin but it was very hard to get through the holes in her feet for example.  Then once she was almost put back together again, I needed the help of an octupus to get her head and headplate back on!!  I also hot glue sueded her, which for those that aren't familiar with this, it is basically that you use a thin layer of hot glue on one side of each joint, usually NOT on the ball joint bit, but that which it goes into....sorry, I have no idea what that would be called...and this helps with posing as it makes a bit of friction between the two pieces of resin.  I then put thin wires through all her limbs and her neck to help even more.  After that, I added extra blush to her face as she was looking a bit pale, and finally a new wig, which I glued on because wigs always ping off her tiny head...she wears a size 2-3" wig and some of those are even too big on her!!!

And here she is, looking very cute I think!!  Oh and I forgot to say, her name is Scout!

Here she is sitting on the steps on my dollshouse, she's the perfect size for posing with 1/12th scale things!

By the fountain in the front garden of the dollshouse:

Helping with the planters in the front garden:

 Posing on the front steps of the house:

It's a good job there's no water running in the fountain at the moment Scout!

 Playing on her skateboard!

Being carried around by a Giant!  Oh no, that's just me!  (Showing you just how small she actually is!)

A little bit of work on Summer...

Summer is my Ciao Bella tanned Judy, from Bambicrony in S.Korea.

http://bambicrony.net/index.php

She is a BJD made of resin and fully jointed.  She is 27cm tall and takes a size 6 inch wig.  She can be a real challenge to wig because a lot of wigs seem to come in either 5-6 inch, which are generally too small or 6-7 inch, which fall down over her eyes!  The wig she came with, like a lot of default wigs, was way too much hair for such a small head and really long too.  This particular Judy is a limited edition who I got as a full set a couple of years back, although I actually bought her secondhand, but her wig, full outfit and boots, were still in their original packaging, never having been used.  Anyway, she is several years old now and her stringing was awful.  I picked her up the other day and she was flopping about like a rag doll, her arms and legs were spinning in all directions, so yesterday I decided she needed a full overhaul.

I took her to pieces and hot glue sueded her entire body.  That didn't take long because she's only little but then I decided, having checked out the elastic that I'd removed from her body, that she really could do with some better stuff, something that actually still had some stretch left in it!  So I completely restrung her too and now she stands like a rock and poses like a dream!  In the meantime I gave her new eyes, these are lovely golden glass ones, and finally I went through my enormous wig box to see if there was anything in there that would remotely suit her.  I really do have a lot of wigs but as I said above, the problem is her 'in-betweeny' head size.  However, I found this old Lati Yellow wig which I've had for years and lo and behold it actually fit her, even though it is only a 5-6.  I think, having been used very often, the wigcap has stretched out a bit.  I'm really happy with her new look, I love little girls with short hair and I think she looks incredibly cute!!!!

Here she wants to show you how well she can stand now, all on her own, without needing to lean on anything!!